IRL: Fontana: Fernandez Racing race report

Scott Sharp battled amongst the leaders throughout today's Toyota Indy^Ã™
400 en route to a fourth-place finish, his career-best at California
Speedway. Sharp entered the race weekend six points out of the top-five
in the championship, and his ...

Scott Sharp battled amongst the leaders throughout today's Toyota Indy^Ù
400 en route to a fourth-place finish, his career-best at California
Speedway. Sharp entered the race weekend six points out of the top-five
in the championship, and his strong run today secured a fifth-place
ranking in the final standings. He ended the season with six top-five
and 13 top-10 finishes including a win in Kentucky.

Scott Sharp, #8 Delphi Panoz/Honda/Firestone: "We came into this race
shooting for a top five in the points and we had a great day and
accomplished that. The guys gave me some great pit stops today like
they have all year. That has been a real strength for us. Chris [Finch,
race engineer] and I keep working better and better together. I think
we maximized everything we had on our car. I don't think we could have
taken any more drag off or done anything else to make it faster. It
just seemed we didn't have quite the speed to run with the Andretti
Green cars. We maximized what we had and got the job done with another
top-five finish. It was a really great year for the entire team.
These guys just don't stop. My hat's off to JD [John Dick, Technical
Director], Chris and the entire engineering staff for working their
tails off the past two weeks to come here with a new setup. This is the
best we have run on a big track. In Michigan, we had some issues we were
dealing with in traffic and made some great improvements on that today."

SCOTT SHARP FAST FACTS: This was his 115th IndyCar Series career start
and 107th consecutive start-- is in his 10th season of IndyCar Series
competition, and is the only driver to have contested every season of
IndyCar Series competition since the inception of the IRL 10 years
ago-- career record includes nine wins, five pole positions and 32
top-five finishes-- was the 1996 IndyCar Series co-champion and the 2001
Indianapolis 500 MBNA Pole winner-- is a former two-time SCCA Trans-Am
Champion and three-time SCCA National Champion-- 37 years old from
Norwalk, Connecticut-- currently resides in Jupiter, Florida.

Tom Anderson, Owner/Managing Director: "It was a very good day for the
Delphi Fernandez racing team. Scott did everything he could with the
car we were able to give him today and with all of the strong runners
finishing the race on the lead lap, I think that is a very credible
result. I am really pleased for Scott and the whole Delphi team to end
up fifth in the championship this year, duplicating our result with
Adrian last year. A big congratulations to Honda on their fantastic year
and all their wins -- Motegi, the Indianapolis 500, the championship and
Rookie of the Year. It has been a sensational season for them. A great
thank you to Firestone as well who have given us great rubber all year
long. Here at Fontana, the tires were beautiful today."

Chris Finch, Race Engineer: "It was a fantastic race and a fantastic
year with a fourth-place finish today and fifth in the championship. We
just didn't have enough for the AGR cars there at the end. The guys,
again, did a great job on their pit stops and Scott did a wonderful
job in the cockpit as usual. I just can't say enough. We hung in there
all year through the ups and downs and just had a really good first
season with Scott. I'm looking forward to next year. A big thanks to all
the guys. We will go into the off season and see if we can't make it a
little faster."